This invention relates to the art of AM radio broadcasting and, more particularly, to an RF power amplifier system of the type employed in AM radio broadcasting and employing digital amplitude modulation with pulse width modulating RF drive.
The patent to H. I. Swanson (U.S. Pat. No. 4,580,111) and the patent to K. T. Luu (U.S. Pat. No. 6,294,957) disclose an amplitude modulator for use in AM radio broadcasting and wherein the modulator serves to generate an amplitude modulated signal by selectively turning on and off a plurality of RF amplifiers in a digital manner to produce amplitude modulation. The amplifiers are essentially identical and each produces a signal of the same magnitude and duration known as a unit step or big step. The amplifiers are connected together in series so that big step signals are additive when combined and applied to a load, which may include a broadcasting antenna.
A drive system supplies an RF signal which is passed and amplified by each amplifier that is turned on. This is an efficient way to generate an amplitude modulated envelope signal. The envelope has a very high fidelity and low distortion because of the benefit of the wider bandwidth and digital resolution. In the case of a modern AM broadcast transmitter, very high positive peak modulation is required. Typical, peak modulation is +125% to +150% or higher to meet some requirement with the arrival of digital radio transmission.
Implementation of this modulation technique has been accomplished by using equal steps of power amplifiers which, when turned on, provide equal big steps. However, this technique has required lots of the same power amplifiers to achieve good resolution and, hence, cost may be significant. Thus, to produce a 12-bit resolution signal, the system may require more than 1000 power amplifiers, each providing the same magnitude big step.
It has been known in the prior art to implement the above method with the use of binary weighted power amplifiers to reduce the number of power amplifiers. This type of system includes power amplifiers that provide big steps as well as some power amplifiers that provide little or fractional steps. This helps reduce the number of power amplifiers but the technique has many limitations because the power amplifiers are not exactly the same and, hence, there are variations in group delay, power gain, RF drive phase alignment with respect to each other. This may create non-linearities which are difficult to correct.
The present invention is directed toward improvements permitting the use of a plurality of power amplifiers each providing an output of the same size and, hence, eliminating the need for big step and little step amplification. This is achieved in accordance with the present invention as will be described herein.